A hard story told with grace
Chip Le Grand | February 08, 2008 | The Australian
APPARENTLY, it is time for Richard Tambling to get a move on. Time to step up. Break out. To impose himself on the AFL.
After all, he is 21. Been playing for three years. I mean, how long should a Richmond supporter have to wait for a No4 draft pick to start shredding opposition teams?
It's an easy thing to say. Easy demands to make. Tambling is a talented footballer and, increasingly, talented footballers are expected to do big things at young ages. Dare we mention Chris Judd, who was a Brownlow medallist, club champion and All-Australian at the same age as Tambling is now?
But just out of curiosity, what were you doing at 21? Stretching out a uni degree? Working in a bar? Bumming around Europe? Whatever the answer, keep it in mind as you read on.
The truth about Tambling is that his AFL career is progressing quite nicely, thank you. Since arriving at Punt Road built like a badminton racquet at the end of 2004, he has played 53 senior games and kicked 40 goals. He has had some very good games and others not so good. Richmond has seen enough in the good ones to sign him until 2010.
This year, Tambling wants to shift from the forward line to the midfield, where he played all his junior football. He has set himself a short-term goal of being in the centre square for the opening bounce of the new season, when Richmond and Carlton, the two worst-performed teams of 2007, share the MCG on March 20.
"There is going to be a whole lot riding on it," Tambling said with a hint of foreboding. "I just hope fans don't jump off the bandwagon too soon."
Tambling has learned to think differently about football and particularly his place in the AFL. Where simplistic comparisons with Lance Franklin once riled him - Richmond took Tambling one pick before Hawthorn selected Franklin in the same national draft - he now realises he spent too much time worrying about things written or said.
Where Tambling was once impatient to leave his mark on the national competition, he now accepts that every footballer must develop at his own rate, regardless of draft position or his junior reputation.
"James Hird was taken in the lower end of his draft and he is an amazing player. (Brett) Deledio is a No1 and he has played like a No1. There has been over 100 years of footy and Chris Judd is the first person to do what he has done," Tambling said.
"It will be a long time again before another player can do what he has done. If I could become half the player he was at 21 I would be very happy."
Yet to really understand how far Tambling has come, you need to look beyond games played, possessions gathered and football altogether. To get a sense of what Tambling is all about, you need to consider what he did last year, when he took his kid brother Lachlan by the scruff and yanked him away from a likely and all too familiar fate of booze, drugs and hopelessness in the Northern Territory.
"He is only 16 now and he had missed two years of school," Tambling recalled during a break in Richmond training this week.
"He was hanging around with the wrong crowd. He didn't have something like I had, with footy, to tell him not to hang out with these types of people who don't see anything right for themselves in the future.
"I said to him, 'look mate, we obviously need to help you out, would you like to come live with me?' At the time, I had just bought a house and there was a spare room available. I asked him and he thought about it for a while but before he asked mum or anyone else he said yes, so mum didn't really have a say."
To complicate matters, the wrong crowd Tambling's brother was hanging with included family; cousins and uncles and aunts living on the outskirts of Darwin who didn't understand the damage they were doing.
To further complicate matters, Tambling had his own family in Melbourne to consider - his two-year-old son Tyson and partner Amy.
"It is a hard story to tell," he said. "My family still live in an Aboriginal community where the conditions aren't great. Within myself, and without telling anyone else, I felt guilty for living the life I am now and leaving them the way they are.
"Every now and then I still send money when they need it, but I just felt I needed to give something back and my brother gave me that opportunity.
"He was hanging around with people who were on drugs. He wasn't going to school or looking for a job. Now he is talking about finding a job, buying a house and never moving. Sometimes just being a role model doesn't help. You have to physically demand it from them every day. That is what I thought I could give Lachlan.
"I am more than happy with him living with me now. I have a two-year-old and it is sort of like taking on another kid at the age of 21, but he has made it easier for me down here because I barely knew anyone and he is a relative that I can be close to.
"He has gone to school for half a year and won half the school awards. He looked at me at the end of the year, after the awards, and said, 'I still can't believe it'.
"I just smiled at him. Anyone can do whatever they want if they put their mind to it, and he didn't give himself a chance back in Darwin."
There is one more thing to add to this story. At the time of Tambling's intervention on his brother's behalf, he was in the middle of a form slump. Not long after Lachlan came to live in Melbourne, Tambling was dropped to the VFL.
Yet despite the pressure mounting on Tambling inside and outside the club, particularly once the comparisons with Franklin started coming, Tambling chose not to tell the club about his changed living arrangements.
"I keep my family business away from the club unless I need help," he said. "It was pretty tough but if you have ever met my girlfriend Amy, you will understand who does all the shouting and yelling in our house. She has helped Lachlan quite a lot."
The other person who supported Tambling in his decision was his grandmother Barbara, the Tambling matriarch who raised him from the age of one. While Tambling's mother did not oppose the decision, it was Nanna Barbara who provided constant advice and reassurance.
"She has probably been the most important person in my life," Tambling said. "Not only did she raise me at a very young age, she taught me how to do things right.
"I speak to my grandma as much as I can, whether it is every couple of days or a week or two. We are always talking on the phone. I can barely understand what she says because she speaks in such a low pitch but it is just good to hear her voice. She is a very quiet woman until you get her grumpy."
During last year's post-season break, Tambling took little Tyson to Darwin to meet his great-grandmother and marvelled at the sight of him toddling around the same open spaces that he hunted and fished in as a boy. But curiously, when he boarded a plane to return to Melbourne, he felt he was going home as much as leaving it.
While Tambling is intent on building a new day job in the Richmond midfield, he is this year beginning a traineeship at a juvenile justice centre which could lead to a career in youth or social work after football.
Amy has nearly completed her university studies; Lachlan is enrolled for another year at Northland Secondary College and appears to be an auto-mechanic in the making.
"When I am here, there are things I can't do here that I can at home, such as fishing and shooting and exploring the land we have up there," Tambling said. "That makes me miss home quite a bit and I still consider Darwin home. But at the same time, when I do go up there, I miss Melbourne a bit.
"I miss having my own place, my own space and knowing that everything is mine. When I am at home, I didn't know what I could do and what I could touch. It is difficult. I will always consider Darwin home but Melbourne is where I am based and I am happy with it."
So what do you think? Time for Tambling to stand up, to break out, to impose himself? Or has he done that already.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23176830-5012432,00.html
